Warrior's Curse

by Alexa Egan

  Each thrust curled tighter in his gut, each fluttering spasm of her inner muscles tensed his body like a drawn bow, every inch of him alive and awake. He drove into her once more as she cried out in a shuddering gasp. He exploded inside her as she rode him, drawing out her pleasure and his own, her sex tremoring against his cock, her whimpering gasps against his ear bringing him to climax again.

  The shadows lengthened. The curse moved sluggish and slow through his bloodstream. He saw the blue and silver flames crowding his vision. But he pushed these away as he held her. The battle would be joined soon enough. If he could not give the clans a future, perhaps he could offer them another son of Idrin, a boy who would take up the fight he might fail.

  “He would be an eagle and strong as his father,” she said, sensing his unspoken thoughts.

  “He would not be the Duke of Morieux,” he replied.

  Her tears splashed hot upon his chest. His own stung his blinking eyes. “But he could be leader of the five clans. It’s in the blood,” she whispered.

  16

  It was past midnight when they convened in the foyer. With a few final instructions and a firm handshake for each, Gray sent Flannery, St. Leger, and Lucan into the night, each bearing a disk of the Gylferion.

  Meeryn carried Jai Idrish, though she hid it in an inside seam of her gown, hastily stitched closed around the sphere. A bit bulky, but in the dark none would notice the odd drape of her skirts or the way her hand rested gently against her hip. At least that was her hope.

  She and Gray lingered behind, making final adjustments to the traps he’d laid and the snares he’d set. Should the Ossine attempt another attack, they would receive more than they bargained for.

  He kissed her in the dim light of a last candle. “If Ringrose is right, I can meet Dromon whole and unsullied by Fey-blood magic. He’ll have no choice but to accept my ascension.”

  “He has an army of choices, and they still believe you murdered your grandfather and they still fear you’ll destroy the clans through your alliance with Fey-bloods.”

  “It’s the only way, Meeryn.”

  He was so solid, so warm, so incredibly dear to her. She wanted to hold on to him and not let go. Escape back to their upstairs chamber, lock the door, and forget the world. Then a tremor passed through him, no more than a stiffening of his body and a tightening of his embrace, but it was obvious the curse fought to overcome the draught’s protection. That every day, as the draught’s effects weakened, the curse grew stronger. What they had hoped were months might be less than that. Weeks before potion and curse together did what Dromon’s forces had not been able to do in the last two years—destroy Gray.

  She lay her head upon his chest, listening to the steady beat of his heart. “I understand the reasoning. I hate the necessity. And . . . and I’m afraid.”

  “Of Dromon?”

  “Of losing you. Of losing this so soon after I’ve found it.”

  He looked as if he wanted to say something, his eyes darkening like clouds slanting across a dark sea, then he pulled her cloak close about her shoulders and kissed her on her forehead and the sun returned to his bright stare.

  The heat seemed to press at her from all sides beneath the heavy fabric. “Ugh, nothing worse than wool in the summer,” she complained. “Must I wear it?”

  “You must. Sir Dromon’s enforcers will recognize you if you don’t. And there’s no saying how many he’s salted London with.”

  She pulled the hood up around her face. “I can hide my features, but I can’t hide my presence. They’ll feel me as soon as I pass.”

  “That’s why I’ve called on assistance to draw off any enforcers who might stray too close. It won’t give you much time, but if you need it, he’ll see you have the seconds you need to elude them.”

  “Who?”

  A figure stole clear of the alley. A man dressed to blend in, with a face as nondescript as his attire.

  “This is Breg.”

  The old man doffed his cap and offered her a slight gentlemanly bow, his gaze shifting from shadow to shadow in the house as if he spied spooks in every creak and enemies in every flicker of the candle’s flame. “Lady N’thuil. It’s an honor.”

  “Please call me Meeryn.”

  “Not likely. I may have been raised avaklos in Whitechapel ’stead of the family’s holding in the north, but I know what’s due the Voice and Vessel. You’ll be treated with the respect what’s owed.”

  “Get her to Ringrose, Breg. Do whatever you have to, but make sure no harm comes to her. Do you understand?”

  “You can trust Breg. He’ll make sure she turns up right and tight when and where she’s needed, my lord . . . I mean, that is . . . Major, sir.”

  Meeryn turned to Gray. None but she would have noticed the slight shiver that passed under the skin of his face or settled like a mask behind his eyes. “I’m the Duke of Morieux these days, Breg. It’s to be Your Grace from now on whether I like it or not.”

  Breg gave another doff of his cap and a deeper bow. “Aye, sir, as you say, my lord, I mean Your Grace. As you say, but you see”—he peered over his shoulder with an odd shrug and a squint into the alley’s dark—“if it were up to me, my lord, but you see . . . they . . .”

  Meeryn stiffened, her blood like ice. “Gray. Run! It’s the Ossine!”

  There were no shots fired or knives hurled, not even a voice raised. Instead the shadows stretched long and lean and cruel up the side of the alley walls. The crackling feel of Imnada like a tug under her breastbone. “There are too many of them. We’ll never win our way through.”

  Gray dragged her into the passage and snuffed the single candle, plunging the room into darkness. “Do just as I said. Go toward the roof. Always toward the roof. If all else fails, take to the air. I’ll find you.”

  With a last kiss and a final squeeze of her hand, he was gone. Black against black. A silent figure moving away into the maze of store rooms and sculleries. She nodded, her fear like a plunge of ice water burning her down to the bone. She raced toward the kitchens, clamping a hand to her side as Jai Idrish banged against her hip.

  The door flew open behind her, men spilling into the passage like ants from a hive. Glints off knives. The gleam off pistol butts. At least in the city, they were safe from attack by a pack of wolves or ambush by a panther. Even Dromon would avoid that kind of notice, no matter his desperation in stopping Gray.

  “Done what I was told. Done it and no tricks.” Breg wept. “I’m not a harm to none. Not a harm to—” There was a muffled shot as if the pistol had been held close against the body as it was fired, a groan quickly cut off, and silence but for the scrape of men’s boots and the rasp of men’s breathing.

  Breg had paid for his betrayal with his life. Meeryn spared a hasty prayer for the little man. She didn’t fault him for his treachery. Many far stronger than him had fallen to the Ossine’s rougher persuasions.

  She pelted through the kitchens, and up the stairs toward the ground floor. Smashed through into the entry hall. Two men stood just inside the front door, eyes white in dark faces. They approached her cautiously as she stood frozen to the spot, luring them closer. Another step. Then another. The twine Gray had stretched across the corridor snapped. The makeshift spring gun fired, sending a plume of choking smoke rolling through the downstairs. One of the men screamed, going down with a blast to the chest. The second man threw himself to the side, but Meeryn was prepared for that. Her dirk ended in his throat. He clung to the handle, mouth opening and closing as blood gushed over his hands.

  Gray’s orders had been specific. Do not hesitate. Do not falter. She took the stairs for the first floor.

  The men behind her hit the entry hall and found their comrades. A new howl of anger met her ears as they followed, now less restrained by silence or deception. A shot splintered the doorjamb three feet to her right. Another exploded a sconce by her head. In the dark, the snaking fuse Gray had set glowed like a single red eye as it ate its way t
oward the small bag of black powder collected from his store of weapons.

  She raced down the corridor and around the corner, where a rush of wind and heat knocked her to her knees, tore the breath from her lungs, the explosion ringing her ears. She lay on her stomach, her heart threatening to tear its way from her chest with the pain of its beating. Moans and groaning whimpers and the charred stench of flesh soured her stomach.

  Slowly and painfully she climbed to her feet. Made her way up to the second floor and the third. The determined sounds of pursuit had become the cries of wounded and the death rattles of the dying.

  She threaded her way through the cluttered attics. She would hide Jai Idrish here among generations of de Coursy cast-offs. She would shift. She would flee. Gray had told her to take no chances. She was more important than the sphere. Her life meant more to him than his salvation.

  How about that trunk? Or perhaps the chest of drawers over there? Did that suit of armor in the corner make a good hiding spot? Or perhaps in plain sight was the best. Lay it in the empty eye socket of that lion skin rug rolled in the corner.

  A figure broke free of the boxes and crates. His body was bulky and beefy-shouldered, an expression of triumph on his jowly face. He was dressed oddly, as if his clothing had come from the trunks and crates surrounding him. On anyone else and at any other time, she might have laughed at the odd assortment of shirt, waistcoat, frock coat and knee breeches he wore. She wasn’t laughing now.

  “You overlooked one detail, Lady N’thuil,” Thorsh gloated.

  “And what was that, Mr. Thorsh?” she replied in her most arrogant tone of voice as she slid her hand into the hidden pouch sewn within the seam of her dress and fingered the loose threads free. The sphere dropped into her hand. Using her fear as a cover, she backed against an unlidded barrel overflowing with straw to cradle the china or glassware within. She braced herself with one arm as if to steady herself, easing the sphere into the tub, where it sank quietly from view.

  He stepped toward her, his commandeered clothing stretching across his wide chest, revealing his hairy knees. “I’m of the Seriyajj, too. And the distance from Cornwall to London is much shorter . . . as the eagle flies.”

  So intent upon the man in front of her, she never heard the two behind who’d apparently escaped Gray’s rough and ready man traps. They gripped her arms. Dragged her nearly off her feet.

  “Where’s de Coursy?” Thorsh demanded.

  She tried controlling the knocking in her knees by locking them together and forced herself to meet him eye to eye as she scrambled to channel the authority of every N’thuil that had come before. Her chin lifted in an attempt at calm disdain. “The Duke of Morieux is gone. I told him to flee while I distracted you. He’s more important than I am. You said it yourself. The N’thuil is a useless title.”

  Thorsh’s mouth tightened, his brows low across his broken nose. But the smile that followed caused Meeryn’s stomach to drop into her shoes and goose bumps to rise up and down her arms.

  He chucked her chin as an elderly uncle might a favorite niece. A sweet gesture, had it not been for the savagery in his pale eyes. “Useless as Voice and Vessel, mayhap, but as bait you’re a prize indeed.”

  * * *

  Bent over, hands braced on his thighs as he gulped in precious air, Gray surveyed the results of his scheme. Two dead in the entry hall. Another lying on the staircase where he’d dropped with a knife in his back. That didn’t count the two dispatched before they made it past the kitchens or the ones caught by the blast upstairs. He straightened, wincing at the pain in his side. Shrapnel had caught him in the explosion; wood and plaster ripping into the flesh above his hip. He pressed a hand against the wound. Blood leaked through his fingers.

  He removed the drawstring bag where he’d placed the silver disk for safekeeping. Dropped it into his left boot. It would be safe there.

  “De Coursy? You still here? We’ve got someone who wants to speak to you.”

  Gray lifted his head, dread sliding cold and deadly through his gut, as he eased his hand into his pocket for his loaded pistol.

  “Miss Munro has been a naughty girl,” Thorsh continued. “Sir Dromon will enjoy seeing her punished. He gets off on hearing women scream.” He chuckled. “Anybody scream, for that matter. Seen him take a man apart bone by bone just to hear him screech.”

  Thorsh’s smarmy voice set Gray’s teeth on edge. His self-satisfied bluster itched Gray’s fists. But his words chilled him to the core.

  “This is the madman you would have lead the clans?”

  “This is a madman that’ll make the Fey-bloods tremble in their boots. Skin the hides off a few of those magic-breeders and the rest will see we’re not to be trifled with. But first, we’ll start with your whore.”

  Two enforcers half-dragged, half-carried Meeryn between them, Thorsh leading the gruesome parade dressed as a . . . Gray frowned. What the hell was the man wearing?

  No time to worry over that now. The foursome paused at the top of the staircase. Thorsh gave a signal and one of the men pulled a pistol and held it against Meeryn’s head. “Surrender or . . . how did you put it”—he tapped a finger to his lips in thought—“that’s right . . . or I blow a hole through your precious N’thuil.”

  Gray’s heart thrashed in his chest, his stomach rolled up into his throat, but none of it showed on his granite exterior. “I’m right here. Shoot me and get it over with, but leave her out of this.”

  Thorsh smiled. “Shoot you? That’d be too easy. Besides, Sir Dromon wants you alive. He wants you to pay for your crimes in the stone circle of the Deepings Hall, but this time, there’ll be no escape. You’ll die chained to that scaffold.”

  “Very well, I’ll come with you now, but let Meeryn go. This wasn’t her fight. I stole her from the holding. Forced her to take Jai Idrish—”

  “I heard about that.” Thorsh tsked his disappointment and shook his head. “Thought you’d break the Fey-blood’s curse, did you? What a crock of nothing. Jai Idrish is as dead as you’re gonna be soon. The stone’s useless. The N’thuil’s useless. The Imnada have to live by our wits and our strength, not some ancient power that doesn’t exist anymore.”

  Gray’s hand eased into his pocket, his fingers cocking the pistol. “If it’s a crock of nothing, I’ll be dead in a few weeks. Why even bother to go to all this trouble when I’m barely a threat?”

  “Your death’s no trouble at all.”

  “Feeling’s mutual.” Gray dragged the pistol free and fired in one swift motion. The enforcer holding the gun to Meeryn’s head went down in a spray of skull and brains.

  Meeryn dove for the floor, Thorsh crashing with her in a tangle of arms and legs. Gray snatched up a splintered piece of banister, hurling it like a spear toward the second enforcer. The jagged wood ended in his chest and the man fell, gripping the slick bloody wood with astonishment, eyes and face white.

  Gray leapt over him as he took the stairs two at a time.

  Thorsh scrambled back down the hall, dragging Meeryn with him, using her as a shield. He let fly with a dagger, the point aimed for Gray’s heart. There was no time to avoid the blade. No time to think. Gray stepped into the throw, snatching the handle just before it pierced his breast.

  “Bloody fucking hell,” Thorsh muttered as he dragged Meeryn through a doorway into an upper bedchamber.

  Gray pounded up the final stairs after them.

  “Don’t! It’s a trap!” Meeryn shouted.

  Too late. He skidded to a halt as the door to the room swung shut, and Thorsh stepped behind him. “Should have listened to her.”

  The fist to his wounded ribs dropped him to the floor on a bitten-back scream of pain. The slam to his stomach stunned him. The boot to the head he never felt.

  * * *

  She paced the room. Paused to listen. Paced again. No sounds to let her know what was happening elsewhere. Just an ominous silence, a quiet that could mean anything. She had no idea how long she’d been locked
in here, clouds obscured the sky and the moon had set hours ago. Was it long enough for Mac and David and the others to come looking for them? Or had Gray instructed them to cut their losses and keep out of the way if plans went sour?

  Was she on her own?

  She tried jimmying the latch on the door, but she’d no talent for lockpicking, and with her wrists bound with silver-laced cords, she couldn’t shift to escape. Besides, she’d be damned if she left Gray behind. They would figure it out together, she’d promised. She wouldn’t back out on him now. At least Thorsh hadn’t found Jai Idrish. As long as the sphere was safe and she was breathing, there was hope. Slim and fading with every minute that ticked past, but she’d cling to whatever reassurance she could.

  She sat on the bed, curling her legs underneath her. The silver sapped her will. It would be easy to surrender to the nausea and the headache and the teeth-chattering fever and just lie down and close her eyes to sleep. No, she had to keep moving, keep thinking. There had to be a way. She rose to continue her restless pacing.

  A key turned in the lock, bringing her up short, and the door swung open. She caught her breath and braced for the worst as Mr. Thorsh stepped into the room.

  “Ever hear of a whipping boy, Lady N’thuil?” He grinned. “I’ll wager de Coursy has. And I’ll wager he gives me what I want to keep you from being harmed.”

  “You’re mad.”

  Thorsh backhanded her. She fell across the bed with a gasp of pain, ears ringing. She brought her bound hands to her swollen mouth, refusing the tears burning her eyes.

  He grabbed her up, pushing her roughly ahead of him out the door, down the corridor. She stumbled on the stairs, nearly falling through the broken banister, but he dragged her up again and marched her on.

  A lamp had been lit in the library, a few sconces, and a candle sputtering on the mantel; more than enough light to see Gray, hunched and bleeding, on a chair set close to the desk amid his scattered ruined books. He looked up, an eye swollen shut, his shirt ripped to his waist to reveal deep black and purple bruising. Low on his ribs, he bore an ugly blackened blast wound. “What is she doing here?”